Deepen the Core
Can we grow from what we already have?
Question 02 of 08. Understand: is the base solid? 0 to 2 years.
Pricing realisation, wallet share, customer profitability after the real cost of serving, concentration risk. Almost always the cheapest growth available, and routinely skipped because it is unglamorous.
Narrowing the spread between what you list and what you actually collect returns more, faster, with no capital, than any expansion initiative.
Same question, two businesses
Funded scale-up
Series A or B, equity, a clock
Skipped too early
Frequently skipped: new logos are the metric the board watches. The irony is that net revenue retention moves valuation more than new customer count, and is cheaper to improve.
Promoter-led business
Debt, retained earnings and cash flow
The cheapest growth
Usually where the fastest money sits. A pricing band that drifted over a decade; a long tail of unprofitable accounts; a top customer served below cost out of loyalty.
The work behind this question
- PricingSetting your price: what buyers pay, what your costs allow, and how you charge.
- Revenue Operating SystemFor companies whose revenue is chaotic: planning, demand generation, execution and measurement, installed as one system you can forecast from.
- MISMonthly management reports done properly: sales, operations and people numbers, from where they start to a report investors trust.
Where you stand, before the plan
- Founder’s CornerPricing Maturity AssessmentTwelve questions across six dimensions of pricing. You'll find out which part of your pricing is costing you most.
- Founder’s CornerRevenue Maturity AssessmentWhether your revenue number is built or wished for, and which part of the engine is holding it back.
- Founder’s CornerMIS Maturity AssessmentWhether your reporting is good enough to run the company, and to be examined.
Facing this question now?
Most companies need two or three of the eight, in the right order. Tell us where you are and we will tell you which ones bind.